Topband: A mostly dead - boring band

[Tree]

Some of you are sick and tired of hearing about my new beverages.  Well,
it gets worse, I put up an even newer beverage for Europe.  My first attempt
ended up with something not quite the direction I wanted, and shorter than
it should have been.  However, it was working pretty well into Europe - and
when the signals were coming in "not skewed" - I would hear stations on it
I could not copy with my other antennas.

The new beverage went up on Saturday - and I worked SM5EDX with it, but I
didn't have the switching setup to compare it to the old EU beverage.  Last
night, I had the luxury of switching between them - but the band was dead.

There were no signals on the band - no spots on the computer and W7IZL up
on SSB on 1843 talking about how dead the band was.

I continued working on the Stew Perry writeup (almost done) and parked my 
receiver on 1831.5 - which is where SM5EDX was the night before.  Often,
I would hear nothing for 5 or 10 minutes, but the QSB would bring him up
out of the noise for an easy QSO.

Well, after a few minutes, I did indeed hear a signal coming up out of the
noise.  I started listening carefully to see if I could determine if it was
SM5EDX or not.  First I heard "4LW" - then I could get the whole call - 
RA4LW calling CQ.  After another 10 minutes or so, Vlad peaked up and we
exchanged reports.  This was about 20 minutes before Vlad's sunrise, and
his signal pretty much went away about 5 minutes after our QSO with no
sunrise peak.  

I kept looking for ANY signal on the band after that - hearing NOTHING.
Until I saw the spot for UA3TCJ.  I tuned to that frequency to hear someone
in the USA calling CQ DX - like 579 - but when he signed UA3TCJ, I was so
amazed, I forgot how to switch my transmitter on.  Andy came right back 
and after dealing with one or two QSB peaks, we exchanged reports.  You
can hear his signal after our QSO (a bit weaker than when I worked him)
here: http://www.kkn.net/~tree/ua3tcj.wav

Both of these signals were much better on the new beverage - I was very
happy.

Later in the evening, I did hear DK2FG CQing - but not working anyone and
he couldn't hear me.  G3JMJ was on the band later, but I didn't hear him.

You can see my new beverage as a faint red line on this drawing.  North
is at the top and the white lines are the old beverages.  The red one
is about 700 feet long.  It is mostly about 80 feet below average terrain,
but the canyon it is in runs north/south.

http://www.kkn.net/~tree/n6trproperty1.jpg

This all seems to support the wisdom I have heard W8JI and others profess.
The longer these things are - the better, and the more of them you have,
the better.  

While many of you will be jealous of the space I have for such antennas, the
game is the same - figuring out how to squeeze ever db of performance out of
your situation.  Running a wire from one end of my property to the other, and
hooking it up and having it work is the magic that attracts all of us to this
band.  This seems to play out on 160 meters more than any other band.  I just
kick myself for waiting 15 years to try it - having thought that no antenna 
down by the stream would work.

So - that put Eurpoe in the log for four consecutive evenings and zone 16 for
the first time this season.  This band feels like it is ready to explode - so
don't miss it.

73 Tree N6TR/7
Boring, OR
tree at kkn.net